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Laurent Dandrieu: "We can reconcile Christian universalism and national roots"

2022-09-30T10:31:01.623Z


FIGAROVOX / GRAND ENTRETIEN.- For the essayist, who publishes Rome or Babel (ed. Artège), the Church today embraces a discourse of unconditional support for immigration and disdains the concern of peoples to preserve their identity . However, argues the author, Catholicism retains...


Laurent Dandrieu is an essayist and journalist.

He is the author of a dozen books on religious issues, cinema or art history.

He published Rome or Babel,

For a universalist and rooted Christianity

(preface by Mathieu Bock-Côté), published by Artège

.

LE FIGARO.- In your book

Rome or Babel

(Artège), you analyze what you consider to be the drift of Christianity towards a form of acculturated globalism which rejects the legitimacy of borders and identity.

When did this change date and what form does it take today?

Laurent DANDRIEU.-

It can be dated to the beginning of the 1960s, when the Church seemed to sacrifice to the utopia of a happy globalization towards which humanity would necessarily rush, by an awareness of the perils which threatened it (the nuclear apocalypse yesterday, the global warming today) and the necessary "unity of the human family".

This tends to pass from the eschatological point of view to the human point of view, from supernatural hope to political “militancy”.

Consequently the pontifical texts will often insist on the need for a world political authority imposing itself on the nations;

we speak of “world citizenship”, the universal common good marginalizes the common good experienced in the national context.

This tends to become, in a certain ecclesial vulgate, synonymous with selfishness,

the border a figure of exclusion, the concern for one's identity a withdrawal into oneself.

This goes as far as Pope Francis who amalgamates sovereignism with Nazism... One of the most visible manifestations of this drift from universalism to globalism is the Church's pro-migration discourse.

The Church adopts an individualistic vision which, by dint of wanting to consider migrations from the exclusive angle of persons, closes its eyes to the social, cultural, demographic and even religious upheavals that they induce.

Laurent Dandrieu

In this regard, Pope Francis stands out for his “

migratocentrism

”, you say.

In what ?

And yet he remains in line with his predecessors… What is the Church's doctrine on immigration?

In my book

Eglise et immigration, le grand malaise

(Presses de la renaissance, 2017), I showed that if the Church at the same time recognizes the duty of rich countries to welcome migrants in search of security and prosperity, and their right to control migratory flows, its discourse tends to favor the point of view and the interest of migrants, forgetting that of the common good of the host countries.

It is in fact an individualistic vision which, by dint of wanting to consider migrations from the exclusive angle of people, closes its eyes to the social, cultural, demographic and even religious upheavals that they induce.

François subscribes to this line, but accentuates it: both by the obsessive recurrence of his interventions on the subject, and because he pushes the consequences further, to the point of wanting to see illegal immigrants recognize the same rights as legal immigrants.

While he admits the right of states to be cautious, he equates any concrete restrictive policy with a xenophobic reaction, and decrees that borders must give way to migrants' desire for a better life.

You write that Catholicism retains its legitimacy by taking root.

How are Christian universalism and rootedness compatible?

Catholicism is a religion of incarnation, right down to the way its message is embodied in particular cultures.

The Church recognizes that being rooted is “

a vital need of the soul

”, to use the expression of Simone Weil, and the diversity of peoples and cultures is a richness.

Christian universalism is a spiritual unity which proceeds from the divine paternity common to all men, but it is not a political unity which denies differences.

It is not the dissolution of particular identities into a new common identity, it is the communion of these identities in a common spiritual destiny.

How to reconcile the imperative of charity, which imposes foreign aid, with the right to the historical continuity of peoples?

On the one hand, by controlling migratory flows with sufficient rigor for assimilation to remain possible.

Then, remembering that emigration is not a phenomenon to be encouraged in order to promote the unification of the human race, but a heartbreak and a last resort, and that the best way to help the poorest is to work to enable them to stay on their land.

You write that in its history, the Church has not always despised particularisms, on the contrary.

You even mention “

inculturation

”, this practice of the missionary Church which consisted in adapting to indigenous cultures.

What does it consist of?

John Paul II defined it as follows: “

The incarnation of the Gospel in indigenous cultures, and at the same time the introduction of these cultures into the life of the Church.

 This means that Catholicism does not come to replace these cultures or to revolutionize them, but to crown them with Christianity

: customs of any people

,” said Pope Alexander VII to the priests of the foreign missions in Paris.

It also means that when the cultures of the different peoples have encountered Catholicism, they integrate, so to speak, the identity of the Church.

This will allow John Paul II to say that "

the history of all nations is called to enter into the history of Salvation.

»

Openness is of interest only if it opens the door to a solid faith, alive because it is nourished by deep roots.

Laurent Dandrieu

In France, “ identity

” Catholicism

is often contrasted with “

open

” Catholicism.

Isn't there a risk in fact of consolidating the Catholic faith as a purely patrimonial imprint, of museifying French Catholicism?

It is urgent to get out of these binary oppositions.

Openness is of interest only if it opens the door to a solid faith, alive because it is nourished by deep roots.

In 1973, the Dominican Serge Bonnet was already making fun of “

all those priests who continue to preach openness in a house that no longer has a door, window or roof

”.

To want a Christianity anchored in particular cultures is not to turn your back on the universal, it is to root it, it is to give it solid foundations which prevent it from bending to all the winds and giving way to the siren song of liberal globalism.

To want a rooted Christian culture is not to turn your back on the faith or to muse it, it is to provide this faith with the soil that will keep it young,

To attach oneself to one's Christian identity is not to turn one's back on the mission, it is on the contrary to give oneself the means: nothing is more missionary than the mass, than the splendor of the liturgy, than the formidable network of stone Bibles that our churches spread over an entire country.

It is backed by this richness that the Christian best shines through his faith, and that his openness becomes a treasure offered to all.

Rome or Babel, Artège, 400 p., €22.

Artege

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-09-30

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